


It Comes Back To You

by thefeelsonthebus



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (blink and you'll miss them though, Angst and Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes Returns, M/M, Memories, Memory Loss, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Past Character Death, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Self-Hatred, Squint for slash, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Is Not Helping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-02-23
Packaged: 2018-03-14 19:25:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3422786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefeelsonthebus/pseuds/thefeelsonthebus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky couldn't remember how he got inside Stark Tower. All he was certain of was Steve.<br/>Apart from the fact that he was a murderer, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Comes Back To You

**Author's Note:**

> Third ever Marvel fic! I wrote this in about an hour.  
> I'm in too deep. Help.  
> Anyway, here's one of my 3000 headcanons on how Bucky and Steve meet again.  
> Title is from the Imagine Dragons song of the same name.

Bucky couldn’t remember how he got into Stark Tower.

 

It was a disadvantage of walking around the country on his own. Sometimes he woke up in a strange place and he couldn’t remember how he got there. Sometimes he didn’t want to.

 

But wandering on his own was the only way he could find Steve. That was the only thing worth living for. He’d done so many horrible things since 1945, and he had no reason to carry on if it wasn’t for him. He had to tell Steve he was okay, and that he remembered him. He hadn’t even spoken since that day on the helicarrier, he was so traumatized from realising who he was and what he’d done. He wasn’t even certain he’d be able to speak again. Steve was the only thing he was certain of. Apart from the fact that he was a murderer, of course.

 

He woke up with four people surrounding him. One person looking over him. Bucky assessed him quickly. Male. Early forties. Wearing a sharp suit. Strange red metal contraption on one hand. Very angry.

Bucky immediately grappled for the weapons he always kept at his belt to find they weren’t there.

 

He jumped up and stepped backwards instinctively, holding up his metal arm to try and ward his attacker off. It didn’t work. Possibly because the man had a metal arm, or hand, at least, of his own.

 

Then, Bucky realised, with a sinking feeling, that the man’s face was  _familiar._

He didn’t think he’d tried to kill this one before. But where from, if not that?

 

“What do you want with me?” The man said. He looked angry, furious, even, but Bucky knew voices so well that he could sense his voice trembling. “Are you here to kill me like you killed my father?” Suddenly, Bucky was back in snowy Alaska, hid in an alleyway just off the main road. Speeding headlights rapidly approaching up ahead. “Because there’s no chance of that.” He stepped out from the alleyway and into the path of the car. He saw the man driving, his shocked – terrified, even - face illuminated in the light. “We’ve got two assassins, an enormous green rage monster, and me with my suits.” He shot the tyres out, and watched the car skid into a building on the ice. “Of course, you’re already two of those things.” Screams rang out from the buildings, but before they reached him, he was gone. Like a ghost. “You’re an assassin, and I guess you’re a monster too –“

 

Bucky was overwhelmed with rage and anger, mainly at himself. He grabbed the man’s throat with his metal arm and slammed him up against the wall. He heard shouts and felt arms drag him off, but he was still breathing heavily, ready to strike. He could take them. He could take all of them.

 

The man backed away, massaging his throat. “I’m Tony Stark,” he growled. “And you killed my father, Winter Soldier. I know who you are.”

“Tony,” A man said. Bucky whipped his head around and scanned the speaker. Curly grey hair, glasses. Late forties. Controlled anger in his eyes, almost to the point of – fear? Then he realised. He’d read stories about this man while he was travelling. Bruce Banner. The Hulk.

 

Suddenly, Bucky was less sure he could take everyone in this room.

 

His eyes fluttered shut, all the fight quickly going out of him. All he wanted was to find Steve, and then just sleep for a long time. Or, if the worst had to happen, just skip the finding Steve and go straight to the sleeping. He was so tired. He just wanted to be  _done._

 

“Be careful, Tony.” Bruce Banner said. “Don’t push him.”

Bucky was torn between screaming  _don’t push me? What about you?_ And  _I’m right here, you know,_  but words couldn’t come to him at all.

“Maybe you should keep him downstairs.” Bucky span around the other way, and looked at the man in his early thirties with an arrow nocked in his bow. This one wasn’t angry. Just on his guard. “In one of the rooms.” Bucky assumed he meant  _one of the cells with no windows._ “I mean, we all know why he’s here.”

 

Bucky span around fully at that, wondering whether he meant Steve, and thinking, (hoping,) that he knew where Steve was, when he noticed the other person.

He went very still.

The young red-haired woman’s face was trying to be impassive, but Bucky knew she recognised him as well.

_As well._

This was Steve’s companion. He could remember.

 

He took a step towards her. The arrow came to level with his head, Tony stepped forward. But she stayed stock still. She just looked at him, her face devoid of emotion.

Bucky had spent so long doing just that, that he couldn’t anymore.

He let his face crumple.

“Steve?”

His voice was rasping and cracked from disuse, but at least he could speak.

Thank God he could speak.

 

She nodded, her face still emotionless. “He’s out of town. We’ll call him to –“

“Tasha,” the guy with the bow warned. She ignored him.

“We’ll call him to tell him you’re here.” Her voice cracked for the first time. “He’ll want to know you’re okay.”

Bucky pressed his metal arm to his forehead, feeling the cool metal. The woman named Tasha spoke again. “Tony, can he stay in his room?”

 _His_  room?

It took a moment for him to realise  _him_ meant  _Steve._

Something inside Bucky’s chest went  _bump._ Or maybe it was a leap. A kind of leap he hadn’t felt since 1945 when he fell from the train. Or maybe he never felt it at all. He was confused. He wasn’t certain of anything from back then.

 

Tony hesitated for a bit too long before saying. “Sure.” Then there was such a short pause between his next words that Bucky almost laughed. “Lock the door, though.”

 

Tasha stood up, and gestured for Bucky to follow. He did, his movements slow and wooden. He looked back to see that the guy with the bow looking like he wanted to wet himself, but then he blurted out “Nat, are you sure you’ll be okay?”

Natasha –  _that_ was her name – turned around and stared at him incredulously. “Do you really need me to answer that question?” She walked out, leaving Bucky no choice but to follow.

 

She opened a door that lead to a room with blue walls. Bucky stepped inside, and even upon being inside there felt his muscles relax and his heart beat faster. “This is Steve’s room,” Natasha said unnecessarily. He’d know Steve’s faint scent anywhere. “You can stay in here until he gets back.” A pause. “Will you be okay without a window? And with a locked door?”

Bucky nodded silently.

“Okay,” Natasha said, then went to move out. Before she left, though, Bucky moved towards her.

“I nearly killed you,” he blurted out.

She turned around, smiling solemnly. “We nearly killed each other,” she said, then left. He heard the lock slide shut.

 

Bucky slid off his boots, curling his toes on the soft carpet, and walked around the room. He wasn’t checking for bugs, or audio devices. No. He trusted Steve not to have that. Instead, he was running his hands along Steve’s belongings. Drinking in a little bit of his scent. At one point, he came across an old black and white picture of Steve, before he had the serum that made him massive. And next to him, his arms around him easily and familiarly, was –  _him?_

 

Bucky ran his hands along the picture, and wasn’t surprised to feel a lump in his throat.

 

After that, he just curled up on Steve’s bed with the blue covers tucked in tightly at the edges, dragged his pillow down to where his head rested, and closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep. But he wasn’t really aware. He drifted somewhere in between consciousness and unconsciousness, feeling his human flesh hand tremble slightly on the covers, and feeling the metal grooves of his bionic arm pressing into his cheek.

 

He moved it to rest behind him, suddenly gasping for breath and opening his eyes quickly.

 

But he wasn’t back in the HYDRA base, with soldiers looking over him and a greying man in his sixties bending over him with a murderous expression on his face. He wasn’t coated in ice, screaming, without anyone hearing him.

 

He wasn’t lying in the snow, whimpering Steve’s name as he bled out.

 

He was upon Steve’s bed. He was in Steve’s room. Steve would be here soon. He buried his face back in the pillow, trying to inhale the soft, warm, familiar scent, and bit back a sob. The Winter Soldier didn’t cry.

 

But he wasn’t the Winter Soldier. He was Bucky Barnes.

 

Bucky relaxed his eyes a little and let a tear soak into the pillow just as he heard voices again from outside the door.

 

Probably Tony, he thought, as the first muffled voice said something to the female voice he was sure was Natasha. Tony trying to take him away from Steve and put him in a cell. Bucky couldn’t blame him – after all, he did kill Tony’s father –  _and his and Steve’s friend, oh God_ – and if he wasn’t in here, with Steve’s belongings, he’d probably want to be in a cell himself. Locked in a room where he couldn’t hurt anyone.

 

Then Natasha was putting the key in the lock, and Bucky was sure that they were going to take him away and down into a cell, so he tried not to tense his muscles up. They wanted him to go away willingly. He would. He was done fighting. But Tony’s harsh tones didn’t come.

 

Bucky looked up after over five seconds.

 

It wasn’t Tony.

 

Steve stood there, his face pretty much exactly what Bucky was feeling. Aside from having slightly mussed-up hair and a much more efficient suit, he didn’t look any different from the day when Bucky last saw him in 1945.

“Bucky?” Steve whispered.

Bucky could remember the last time Steve said that. He wasn’t going to make that same mistake again.

“Steve,” he murmured back. “You’re alive.”

“You’re alive,” Steve repeated, and took a step towards Bucky, placing both of his hands gently just below Bucky’s elbows, not flinching at the cool metal of his left arm.

Bucky didn’t flinch either.

 

“I thought you died. In 1945, I thought you died.”

“I thought I killed you, Steve,” Bucky croaked, close to tears. “I thought I’d killed you on that helicarrier, I thought for a second you’d drowned.”

“But you didn’t, Buck,” Steve said, stepping closer. He was a breath away now. “You saved my life. I would have drowned – I would’ve if you weren’t there.”

“But you were the one who made me remember.”

“Yeah, you remembered,” Steve whispered back, now also with tears swimming in his eyes. “You remembered what you said – ‘till the end of the line – you  _remembered it._ ”

“It meant a lot to me,” Bucky said, trying to make it sound like a fact, but it came out emotionally. “And you remembered too.”

Steve gave a choked laugh. “But your situation’s a bit more extreme than mine.”

And then Steve pulled Bucky into a tight hug, and Bucky buried his face in Steve’s shoulder and sniffed to try and keep back the tears.

 

Steve ran his hand softly, affectionately, through Bucky’s hair that he’d started tying up at the nape of his neck. “You’re alive, Bucky. You’re alive, and I’m alive. Who would have thought that we’d both be alive in 1942 and 2015?”

Bucky pulled away from the secrecy of Steve’s shoulder, and let Steve see his puffy eyes. “I’m glad I’m alive, Steve,” he murmured.

Steve rested his forehead against Bucky’s, and closed his eyes, tears glistening on his eyelashes. His arms were still wrapped around Bucky. “Yeah,” he said, a hint of pure gratefulness in his voice. “I am too.”

 

And for the first time in seventy years, Bucky let himself smile.


End file.
